Lot Essay
Driven mad by Hamlet's neglect and the murder of her father, Polonius, Ophelia decks herself with garlands of flowers prior to her death by drowning. The scene is graphically described by Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, Act IV, scene 7:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come,
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead man's fingers call them:
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook.
The subject had been treated by Joseph Severn (c.1831), Richard Redgrave (1842), Delacroix (1844), Millais (1852), Arthur Hughes (1852), Rossetti (1864) and G.F. Watts (c.1864), and in attempting it Waterhouse was consciously affirming his allegiance to the Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite tradition. In fact he painted three different versions. The first, showing Ophelia lying deranged in a meadow near the fatal brook, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1889. It is now lost, but is known from an old photograph (Hobson, 1980, pl.74). The present picture was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1894. Finally, at the RA of 1910, Waterhouse showed a painting of Ophelia making her way to the brook, clutching her garlands (Pre-Raphaelite Inc. Hobson, 1980, pl.79). This has been much exhibited in recent years, appearing in the Last Romantics exhibition at the Barbican in 1989 (no.113), and being seen most recently in Shakespeare in Western Art, an exhibition circulated in Japan by the Tokyo Shimbun in 1992-3 (no.80).
Our picture is arguably the most beautiful of the trio. If that of 1889 is almost painfully realistic and that of 1910 powerfully dramatic, here Waterhouse opts for a mood of pure poetry, lyrical and elegiac. F.G. Stephens, writing in the Athenaeum when the picture was exhibited in 1894, went so far as to complain that it showed 'little of Ophelia's madness and distress, and not much of her pain or sorrow'. He admired, however, the 'spirit and force' with which the artist had painted 'that weed-strewn, sun-flecked pool,' and concluded that the work was 'a fine piece of colour, bold, harmonious, and complete.' A.L. Baldry made a similar judgement in the Studio later the same year, observing that it was one of Waterhouse's works which owed 'not a little of their refinement and charm of colour to the sensitive treatment of the backgrounds and accessories of leaves and branches.' Waterhouse was to develop the motif of the water-lilies in his well-known Hylas and the Nymphs (Manchester), exhibited at the RA in 1897.
In 1895 Waterhouse was elected a full member of the Royal Academy, and was expected to deposit a Diploma work. He began work on A Mermaid (Hobson, 1980, pl.103), but this was not completed until 1901. Meanwhile he offered Ophelia as a temporary substitute, an offer which seems to have been accepted.
Presumably after the picture had been replaced at the RA by A Mermaid, it entered the astonishing collection of George McCulloch. A Scottish mining engineer who had made a fortune in Australia, McCulloch lived at 184 Queen's Gate, Kensington; he and his wife are seen there, sitting among their treasures, in a photograph reproduced as the frontispiece to the Arts Council's exhibition Great Victorian Pictures, 1978. The collection of over three hundred paintings, drawings and sculptures included such masterpieces as Millais' Sir Isumbras, Leighton's Daphnephoria and Garden of the Hesperides (all at Port Sunlight), Albert Moore's Loves of the Winds and the Seasons (Blackburn), Alma-Tadema's Sculpture Gallery (Rochester, New York), Abbey's Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and the Lady Anne (Yale), Herbert Draper's Lament for Icarus (Tate Gallery) and Bastien-Lepage's Pas Mèche (Edinburgh). Indeed nearly every British academic painter of the day was represented by a major work, as were a number of continental masters and some non-academic painters like Burne-Jones, who contributed three late canvases. In addition to Ophelia, McCulloch owned Waterhouse's St Cecilia (RA 1895; Hobson, 1980, pl.63) and Flora and the Zephyrs (RA 1898; Hobson, 1980, pl.72), a large oil study for which was sold in these Rooms on 25 November 1988, lot 160.
McCulloch's collection took three days to disperse at Christie's in May 1913, Ophelia appearing on the third day. Its next owner was H.W. Henderson, brother of Alexander Henderson, Lord Faringdon, who formed the collection still at Buscot Park, near Lechlade (National Trust), in which the most important modern work is Burne-Jones's Briar Rose series. The Henderson family were staunch patrons of Waterhouse during the artist's later career, buying many of his imaginative works and commissioning numerous portraits.
For another picture from the McCulloch collection, see lot 246.
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come,
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead man's fingers call them:
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook.
The subject had been treated by Joseph Severn (c.1831), Richard Redgrave (1842), Delacroix (1844), Millais (1852), Arthur Hughes (1852), Rossetti (1864) and G.F. Watts (c.1864), and in attempting it Waterhouse was consciously affirming his allegiance to the Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite tradition. In fact he painted three different versions. The first, showing Ophelia lying deranged in a meadow near the fatal brook, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1889. It is now lost, but is known from an old photograph (Hobson, 1980, pl.74). The present picture was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1894. Finally, at the RA of 1910, Waterhouse showed a painting of Ophelia making her way to the brook, clutching her garlands (Pre-Raphaelite Inc. Hobson, 1980, pl.79). This has been much exhibited in recent years, appearing in the Last Romantics exhibition at the Barbican in 1989 (no.113), and being seen most recently in Shakespeare in Western Art, an exhibition circulated in Japan by the Tokyo Shimbun in 1992-3 (no.80).
Our picture is arguably the most beautiful of the trio. If that of 1889 is almost painfully realistic and that of 1910 powerfully dramatic, here Waterhouse opts for a mood of pure poetry, lyrical and elegiac. F.G. Stephens, writing in the Athenaeum when the picture was exhibited in 1894, went so far as to complain that it showed 'little of Ophelia's madness and distress, and not much of her pain or sorrow'. He admired, however, the 'spirit and force' with which the artist had painted 'that weed-strewn, sun-flecked pool,' and concluded that the work was 'a fine piece of colour, bold, harmonious, and complete.' A.L. Baldry made a similar judgement in the Studio later the same year, observing that it was one of Waterhouse's works which owed 'not a little of their refinement and charm of colour to the sensitive treatment of the backgrounds and accessories of leaves and branches.' Waterhouse was to develop the motif of the water-lilies in his well-known Hylas and the Nymphs (Manchester), exhibited at the RA in 1897.
In 1895 Waterhouse was elected a full member of the Royal Academy, and was expected to deposit a Diploma work. He began work on A Mermaid (Hobson, 1980, pl.103), but this was not completed until 1901. Meanwhile he offered Ophelia as a temporary substitute, an offer which seems to have been accepted.
Presumably after the picture had been replaced at the RA by A Mermaid, it entered the astonishing collection of George McCulloch. A Scottish mining engineer who had made a fortune in Australia, McCulloch lived at 184 Queen's Gate, Kensington; he and his wife are seen there, sitting among their treasures, in a photograph reproduced as the frontispiece to the Arts Council's exhibition Great Victorian Pictures, 1978. The collection of over three hundred paintings, drawings and sculptures included such masterpieces as Millais' Sir Isumbras, Leighton's Daphnephoria and Garden of the Hesperides (all at Port Sunlight), Albert Moore's Loves of the Winds and the Seasons (Blackburn), Alma-Tadema's Sculpture Gallery (Rochester, New York), Abbey's Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and the Lady Anne (Yale), Herbert Draper's Lament for Icarus (Tate Gallery) and Bastien-Lepage's Pas Mèche (Edinburgh). Indeed nearly every British academic painter of the day was represented by a major work, as were a number of continental masters and some non-academic painters like Burne-Jones, who contributed three late canvases. In addition to Ophelia, McCulloch owned Waterhouse's St Cecilia (RA 1895; Hobson, 1980, pl.63) and Flora and the Zephyrs (RA 1898; Hobson, 1980, pl.72), a large oil study for which was sold in these Rooms on 25 November 1988, lot 160.
McCulloch's collection took three days to disperse at Christie's in May 1913, Ophelia appearing on the third day. Its next owner was H.W. Henderson, brother of Alexander Henderson, Lord Faringdon, who formed the collection still at Buscot Park, near Lechlade (National Trust), in which the most important modern work is Burne-Jones's Briar Rose series. The Henderson family were staunch patrons of Waterhouse during the artist's later career, buying many of his imaginative works and commissioning numerous portraits.
For another picture from the McCulloch collection, see lot 246.